Chewa Heritage Foundation seeks an apology from Henry Phoya for the remarks he made against the Chewa custom gule wa nkulu.
While seeking apology seems easy to demand, sometimes without proper basis, it is useless to apology without discussion of the real matter at hand.
I must speak, for a similar demand for an apology derailed much important work in the year 2011 including a whole generation of students missing their classes and have to be made to repeat their classes.
This wasted the government a lot of millions, I should say, of tax payers money, though in fact it is donor donated since Malawi has never fully funded its budget until the same year 2011. This wasted the parents, pocket money and transport apart from their tax. And is wasting even more money this year because more lectures have to be recruited (of course, I also applied, I had to deliver the letter by hand).
This money is hard earned and the government does not have the luxury of wasting money for it has no source of funds than donations and tax revenues. A mere useless apology should not cost this much.
So, Henry Phoya speaks his experience with mcp and his dislike of cultural ritual he was required to do.
It wasn't right for MCP to do that. If anything, MCP is necessarily the one to apologies, for using the cultural ritual in this way.
Whether the Chewa themselves find this ritual useful, they should always expect that someone who does not understand the culture will always look at it in this negative perspective. And might publicly express his dislike as Henry Phoya has. If they do so value it, then what good it has should be demystified for there might religious conflict in the practice which if the whole heritage of the Chewa hinges itself on this value which does introduce religious conflict among its own descence.
Most of these that are today cultural values have undergone refining according to various new problems the culture introduces. And there is no reason these cultural heritages should not refine to incorporate the challenges of this age. Including religious values.
For it might be found the cultural heritage is highly lacking than what the bible offers, and what the bible is not easy to translate to the masses in a single day, that is why it is difficult to resolve issues like marriage for a generation that has understood that sex before marriage is sin. And this with the expected high costs of having a wedding.
So, unless we fix the current bad in our cultures, unless, we make known the good values of our culture to generations that do not know these good values, a public expression of a bad cultural practice does not seem to require an apology in my opinion.
So, I have spoken. My speech costs me less than K80. How much will the apology or the lack of it cost?
The previous refusal to apologies is still costing Malawi government of millions if not billions of tax payers and donors money. To make record straight on those who keep claiming tax payers money. Malawi is still dependent on donors. Though it did once manage a self funded operational budget last financial year.
Wish you a good day.
Ps: I must say, Henry Phoya managed to apologies even before I made this post.